Sweet Tea
by Flaignhan
Summary: She must have dreamed that bit.


**A/N: **Big moment. My first dabble in a new fandom for more than half a decade. Be kind. Hope you enjoy it!

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><p><strong>Sweet Tea.<strong>

**by Flaignhan.**

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><p>One glance and he knows she's barely slept in weeks. He doesn't need to have the mind that he does to figure that one out. The circles under her eyes are darker with every visit, and her application of make up is becoming more careless and clumsy. There's a slight glaze to her eyes and it's taking far too long for her to respond to his requests.<p>

Her hands shake when she brings him coffee, and he's started to clear a space for her to put it down, rather than leaving that up to her.

That's kind, isn't it?

He doesn't feel bad, as such. He doesn't have the emotional capacity to feel that, but would prefer it if she were back to normal. He would prefer it if she would stop torturing herself every night with thoughts of what _could have happened_.

"How are you?" he asks, adjusting the zoom on the microscope, only sparing her the most fleeting of looks.

Normally he wouldn't look at all, he wouldn't even ask the question, but he knows he ought to be kind.

Moriarty used her up and spat her out, all because of _him_.

He's not so emotionally inept that he doesn't realise that people get upset over that sort of thing. That girls, in particular, aren't too thrilled about being manipulated by murderous psychopaths, and that the effects stay with them for a little while.

Three weeks is a bit excessive, in his opinion at least, but still, each to their own.

She hasn't answered, and when he looks up, he sees that she does not have her head bowed over her papers in concentration, she is, in actual fact, sleeping.

She gives a little cough and wakes with a start, her eyes darting around like a deer caught in the headlights as her pen rolls off the bench and onto the floor. Her gaze finally lands on him, watching her and she tries to shake off the embarrassment, ducking beneath the bench to retrieve her pen.

"You should go home and sleep," he tells her.

"Can't sleep," she mumbles, reappearing, her cheeks sporting a light blush. Her hair is tangled from neglect, and part of him wants to drag a brush through it. He can't stand the mess.

"Can't one of your friends prescribe you something?"

"Doesn't work," she replies quietly, her expression becoming desperate when she realises she's made no progress on her paperwork in the last three hours.

There is a pause, and she begins to write, scratching her pen hard against the paper until the ink finally gives in and begins to flow.

"You couldn't have known."

"I _introduced _him to you!" she squeaks. "And he almost killed you!"

"But he didn't, so what's to worry about?"

Molly shakes her head, in the way that John sometimes does when he's made a particularly not good comment. He doesn't see the problem with this one though, and so he pursues it.

"What's done is done, and you need to get on with life and stop worrying."

It almost sounds like advice, but it can't be. He doesn't give advice, let alone _comforting_ advice.

Molly nods her head but doesn't say anything. She's even more timid than she was before things went boom, barely says a word, and will try her hardest to avoid eye contact with him at all costs. She was fragile before. She's just broken now.

He doesn't like that very much. Contrary to what most people believe, he does _care_ about people. He cares about John, and he cares about Molly and he even cares about Lestrade. It's not voluntary, it just happens, as though his brain is trying to prove to him that deep down he's still human. There's an uncomfortable twist in his gut when people have suffered because of him. It's the same twist he felt when he saw John, loaded up with explosives at the pool, and the same twist he gets every time he sees Molly's bloodshot eyes.

"D'you want a coffee?" she asks, her stool legs scraping against the floor as she pushes herself away from the bench and gets to her feet.

He eyes her carefully, taking in everything from the clumsily placed clip that's just about keeping her hair out of her face, to the ketchup stain just peeping out from under her lab coat and down to the black pumps, whose soles have taken a battering in the last few weeks. He's not seen her wear any other shoes, though he knows she has plenty. She's not paying attention to her wardrobe, just playing it safe each day with the little black pumps that were never designed to be walked in for any real length of time.

"I'll make it," he says, standing abruptly and causing her to flinch. He resists the urge to sigh. She's so _jumpy_ these days.

"Really?" she asks, her eyebrows knitting together as though he's just announced he's going to apply for the _X Factor. _

"Yes," he says simply. "How many sugars in your tea? Two?"

She nods, and he strolls from the room, realising as he gets to the door that he has absolutely no idea where the teas and coffees are made. He wings it more often than people realise, so he's used to getting to the right place with a few well placed stabs in the dark.

The kettle is housed in a sorry little room, with varyingly used up boxes of teabags scattered around it, a half empty jar of Nescafé hidden among them. The sugar is provided in little sachets, no doubt stolen from the hospital cafeteria, and he manages to find some proper milk for Molly's tea, ignoring the note scribbled on it in permanent marker.

_Joe's milk. Hands off!_

Mycroft would probably say he was being childish, and John would probably sigh in that resigned way he seems to always reserve especially for him, but after he has added enough milk to the tea, he finds himself pouring the rest of the bottle's contents down the sink, leaving just a small amount in the bottom - nowhere near enough for a tea or coffee, but just enough for it to be considered _really_ irritating.

Joe's just going to have to cope with that awful UHT stuff that's been dumped in the same tupperware box as the sugar sachets. Perhaps that will teach him to be a little more well mannered with his milk labels.

As he stirs the tea, and then the coffee, he wonders if John would approve. John's obsessed with being kind, and it must have rubbed off on him, because he wants to be kind to Molly. He wants her to get back to her old self, and making her a cup of tea is apparently a good way to go about such things. John always makes tea in times of trouble. He wonders if he used to sit in the middle of Afghanistan, bombs going off all around, carefully sipping his PG Tips and snacking on digestives.

The idea makes him smile, and he picks up the mugs, pushes the door open with his foot and heads back to the lab.

When he arrives, Molly is slumped forward on the desk, snoring softly, her pen loosely held between her fingers. He sets the mugs down quietly and glances at the paperwork she was supposed to have finished hours ago.

She's barely started.

With a quiet sigh, he pulls the stack of paper towards him, gently takes her pen and studies her handwriting. It's always so much more difficult to imitate female handwriting, but nobody will notice the slight change in style.

When he leaves an hour later, paperwork completed and poison samples carefully stored away, he turns out the lights with a soft _click_, and closes the door behind him.

It is several hours before Molly awakes, stiff necked and bleary eyed, and as she sits up, a pale blue hospital blanket falls off of her and onto the floor. There is a cold cup of tea next to her, and her paperwork is stacked neatly, pen resting atop of it.

She shrieks and pulls it towards her, trying to work out how long she has and how much she can get done in that time. When she flicks through the pages however, there's nothing left to finish. The words look like her own, but she has no memory of writing any of this in. The last thing she remembers is Sherlock, going to make some tea.

She laughs.

She must have dreamed that bit. Sherlock never makes tea.

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><p><strong>The End.<strong>


End file.
